217: Your Business Has Outgrown The Way You Run It

 Welcome to Shoot It Straight, the podcast for women building businesses and lives they actually want. I’m Sabrina Gebhardt, and around here we believe in clarity over hustle, alignment over burnout, and giving yourself permission to want more, more ease, more beauty, more income, more space to live. So if you’re ready to grow without losing yourself in the process, you’re in the right place.

Welcome back to the Shoot It Straight podcast, my friends. The habits that built your business Are now the ones that are actually hurting it. Uh, I feel so cringey telling you that, but I love you, and I want you to hear the truth from me because that’s what we do here. We keep it real. We shoot it straight.

The habits that built your business are the ones hurting it, and they’re the ones breaking it. They’re the reason why things are harder than they need to be. They’re the reason why things feel sticky and icky. And nobody told you that there would be a switch to flip at some point. Nobody told you that the habits that got you going and that got you off the ground would need to be changed.

It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. That’s, that’s what I’m here to do today. So if you’ve been feeling like you’re working harder than you ever have and maybe even going backwards, and you’re like, “I’ve been in this business for a minute now,” or maybe a really long time, “Why does this still feel so hard?

Why do I feel like I’m backpedaling?” This episode is going to explain why, and I- it’s probably not the reason that you think. This is for the photographer who has made it work. If you’re brand new, this episode really isn’t for you. This is for the people who’ve got a couple years under their belt, maybe even four or five, six, maybe even 10.

You’ve made it work. You’ve got bookings. You’ve got clients. You’re making a solid revenue. I’m not saying you’re making six figures, but you are making a solid revenue. You are years into this, but your business doesn’t feel like it is working. You’re looking around and you’re like, “Why does it seem like it’s easier for everybody else?

Why do I feel like this is so hard even though I’ve been doing this for a hot minute?” My promise to you is at the end of this episode, you are going to stop diagnosing yourself as the problem because you are not the problem, and you’re gonna see what the actual problem is. You are not failing. How many times do I say that on the podcast?

I feel like I say that at least every episode. But I really, I want to take you lovingly by the shoulders, my friend. You are not failing. You are just running a mature business on an immature operating system. That’s what we’re gonna call it. You are running an established business on an outdated system.

So I, I could tell you a zillion stories of what this has looked like in my business over the years, right? I’ve been in business almost 16 years at this point. I was an entrepreneur, uh, in a different business before that, and then I was in the corporate world before that. I can tell you story after story after story of, uh, how I’ve seen this play out, things that just became outdated that I realized I needed to change a- and whatnot.

I can also tell you I’ve seen this A zillion times within my students. Most of the people that go through Root to Rise have this exact problem in one shape or form. And sometimes it’s multiple layers for the same woman, sometimes it’s one particular thing, and this is what we do. This is what we do when we work together, is we fix this.

I’m gonna tell you one of my stories just to give you a, a general idea of what I’m talking about here. But I used to be, in the beginning of my business, like many of you, the scrappy photographer. I said yes to stuff, I did things, I had it… I had my business built a certain way. And then, you know this because you’ve got experience, over time, you just start r- running things the same way, right?

It becomes habits and, and habitual and seasonal and cyclical. You figure out how it works one way start to finish for a year, and then you, like, rinse and repeat. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what I did for years and years and years and years and years and years and years. There was a year couple, a couple years ago, where I got into the summer and I realized, I, I don’t think I wanna do fall mini sessions anymore.

And I, that felt very wrong to admit because I had been a photographer at that point for over a decade, and fall mini sessions were just part of what I did. And again, like I said, I had done it cyclically over and over and over and over and over again. But… And I was hanging onto it because did it make me a lot of money?

Yeah. Was it easy after doing it that many times? Yes. But it didn’t feel like it fit anymore because at that point in my business, I was also a very busy coach, as I am now. I had Root to Rise. I had one-to-one clients. I had courses I was teaching. I was speaking at conferences. I had this podcast. And also, in my personal life, all of my kids had grown up.

They were all big kids with busy big kid schedules and big kid things, and nights and weekends were more complicated than ever. And I just kinda realized that doing fall mini sessions didn’t make sense anymore It didn’t make sense anymore, and I was still trying to run my business the way I had, quote-unquote, always run it, and I had fallen into that cyclical habit of that’s what happens in the fall is I add in this layer of mini sessions, and I finally just realized this is not working anymore.

That decision to carry that forward and continue doing what I’d always been doing was actually broken. It was actually doing more harm than good. The behavior itself of hosting fall mini sessions was not wrong. It had just expired, and quite honestly, it probably expired a couple years before I actually made the decision to drop them.

That’s a very small example of what I’m talking about today, and we’re gonna get into this. It’s, it’s the premise that you’re carrying and doing something in an outdated way that does not align anymore with your mature, advanced business So I’m gonna give you some specific examples. I’m gonna give you five specific examples, and I’m gonna tell you why you did it to begin with, and then we’re gonna talk about how that behavior has expired, how you have outgrown it, and a symptom to know whether or not this is you.

And then we’re gonna move on beyond that. So let’s, let’s go through the five examples. Saying yes to everything. Starting strong. It used to be the correct thing for you to do, to say yes to everything. I will tell any brand-new photographer, quite frankly, any brand-new entrepreneur, that this is the way you start.

We’re not gonna get picky right out of the gate. Money is money. You need income to make your business move forward. Before you can make decisions and discern who and what is a yes and a no, we just need to do all of the work. Specifically, as a photographer, you may not know that you love or dread a certain genre or type of person or type of job or whatever until you’ve actually done it.

So saying yes to everything is not a bad thing in the beginning. In fact, I think it is the way to start. But we get into the habit of saying yes to, to everything, and then what happens later on? We get a calendar full of things that we don’t like to do, a calendar full of things that we’re not great at, a calendar full of clients that are not ideal, don’t really align with us, a calendar full of people who are trying to negotiate prices.

We get stuck in a scarcity mindset of, “I have to always accept every single thing that comes in. I must be a yes person.” We outgrow that behavior. That’s not actually what needs to be happening anymore. How do you know if this is you? You dread sessions. There are certain session types that you absolutely dread.

You get the email, and you know it in the pit of your stomach, but you say yes to it anyways. That’s, that’s a s- that’s a sign. That’s a sign that this is happening to you. Also, you’re working with a ton of clients that don’t light you up. You’re doing work that makes you wanna poke your eyes out. Uh, you know in your mind.

Maybe you just hear this and you go, “I know that’s me,” because you know that you say yes to everything, right? You don’t have any kind of discernment as to what you do and what you don’t do. It used to be a good behavior, but it’s actually holding you back now I wanna talk to you about something for a second.

I see this all the time in the industry: photographers who are good at what they do. They are genuinely talented, but they still feel like they’re one slow season away from questioning everything they’ve ever done. They are still making decisions from a place of scarcity. They’re still running their businesses in a way that quietly exhausts them.

I know that feeling because I’ve lived it, and I also know what it costs to stay there longer than you have to. Root to Rise is my mastermind for photographers who are done waiting for things to click on their own. It’s a high-touch group program, and it’s one I’ve been running for years, which means it’s been refined, tested, and built on what actually works, not a theory, not what worked for someone else, what is working for photographers in real businesses at real stages of growth.

The women inside Root to Rise aren’t just growing their revenue. They’re changing how they think, how they make decisions, how they show up. That’s the work, and that’s what makes the results stick. The next cohort isn’t open yet, but the wait list is, and that’s where you wanna be. Wait list members get first access, more details, the chance to have a conversation with me before the door’s open to anyone else, and a discount at enrollment.

If you’ve been circling this and wondering if it’s for you, that’s your answer. Get on the list. sabrinagebhart.com/mastermind-waitlist. The link will be in the show notes. Back to the episode. Second example, number two. Customizing everything in your business. This used to be okay. It used to be, in the beginning, the thing that you should do.

You’re learning how to create a client experience. You are building the plane as you fly it. You are figuring things out as you go. So customizing every single email, every single gallery, all of the, all of the s- you know, setups, all of the invoices, all of the whatever it is you’re doing, that’s fine when you’re beginning.

You’re figuring things out. However, it’s not serving you anymore because now you are overcomplicating things. It’s a complicated onboarding process. It is a complicated client experience. It is a overcomplicated delivery. You’re also making an inconsistent profit because different clients are getting different amounts of time put towards them than others, and that’s affecting your profit margin.

No two clients are getting the same process because you’re re- you’re rebuilding it every single week. You’re re- literally building it from the bottom up, the ground up every single week with every single client. That’s not good. When you’ve been in business for years, you should have a very clear picture of what your client experience should look like and feel like for every single person, and you want every single person to have the same experience.

That is impossible when you are creating everything from scratch, when you are customizing everything for everyone. You are creating a problem. You are overcomplicating things. It was okay then. It is not okay now. Third example, you are personally touching every single task This was fine in the beginning because you were starting out.

Again, you need to learn all the pieces of your business. You need to make sure that every single thing is happening. You are customizing everything. You’re touching everything. You’re watching every single step, and that’s fine, right? You’re… You don’t have, uh, anybody on your team. You’re, you’re doing every single thing all the time.

That was correct then as a beginner. It is not correct now because you are a bottleneck in your own business. You are literally in the way. You are literally holding things back, stopping things from being done faster, better, on time, whatever. You’re the bottleneck now, and what does this look like? It looks like automating things.

It looks like having somebody on your team, a client experience coordinator, an assistant, a VA, somebody, anybody to help you move things along. What happens when you get sick? What happens when your kid gets sick? What happens when there’s a death in the family? Everything locks up. Nothing moves forward, and those are just things that are going to happen.

They’re going to happen. What about you have a really bad period one week, or you s- you know, sprain your ankle, or you’re just really sad because something in the world is happening and you just, you need a day? When you are the only person touching every single thing and creating every single thing and customizing every single thing, you don’t have time to stop.

Because if you get off the hamster wheel, the whole thing clogs up. It’s a huge bottleneck. It’s a huge problem, and then turn around and you’re drowning Fourth example, you’re following every marketing tip that you see online, on social media, on the blogs, on YouTube, on TikTok. Wherever you’re consuming information, you’re getting marketing information and you’re like, “Yes, that idea is fantastic.

Yes, that timeline is what I’m gonna do. Yes, I love that suggestion, gonna try that.” That was correct in the beginning because you were trying to consume as much as possible, learn as much as possible, get your ideas going just to get your business off the ground. There is a little bit of throwing spaghetti at the, at the wall to see what works, to see what sticks, to see what feels good to you, to see what moves the needle for your business.

There’s nothing wrong with that in the beginning. Gathering free information, consuming free education, great, I love that for you. It’s not helping you now. It’s actually hurting you now because now even though you have this beautiful established business, you have a really scattered strategy. There is no strategy.

It’s all over the place. It looks like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, which when you’re a brand-new business baby, you can get away with. When you’ve been in business for several years, no, that’s embarrassing. It’s not helping you. You’re spinning your wheels creating, I’m using air quotes here, “creating” content, creating a marketing strategy, and none of it plays well together.

None of it makes sense. It’s not serving you. It’s not serving you at all. You’re on multiple platforms, but you can’t tell which one is actually getting you clients, if any of them are getting you clients. You’re spending all this time creating marketing content, and you don’t know if people are reading it, clicking it, consuming it, forwarding it, doing anything with it.

You have no actual plan, no actual strategy. You don’t know what works because you haven’t locked in on anything. You’re still just throwing spaghetti out there Number five, you are looking at your availability as your capacity. Those are not the same thing. It used to be correct because when you were a brand new business baby, your availability was p- probably wide open because you weren’t serving a whole lot.

You weren’t doing a whole lot. Your availability is not the same thing as your capacity. It’s not. Those are two different things. This used to be correct for you in the beginning because quite frankly, you had nothing on your calendar presumably. You started a business. You wanted clients. You were wide open.

So when you got those first few inquiries, when things started slowly rolling in, you’re like, “Sure, when do you want your session? Great, that works for me,” and you had all of this time in the world. Well now, that you’ve been established and you’ve got clients coming in and repeat clients and a, a, a lot of other things presumably on your plate, now treating your availability the same as your capacity has led you to chronic overcommitment.

Never having time for yourself, barely having time for your family, constantly drowning, having to work all hours of the day, night, and weekend, and it feels terrible because I’ve been in those shoes and I can speak to that very, very strongly. Just because your calendar has a time slot available does not mean that you should stick a client there.

We’re gonna do this actual math in a couple of weeks in another episode figuring out what your capacity is because capacity and availability are not the same thing. Just know that. We’re gonna circle back onto this ’cause it’s a whole episode in and of itself. But treating every spot on your calendar like a spot for clients is a recipe for disaster, and if you’ve been doing that for years, it’s time to stop.

It’s time to stop. You need to leave some white space. You need to leave some time for business-related tasks. You need to leave time for your family, your friends, yourself. Like there should be a lot of time on your calendar where things are not getting slid in there just because it’s technically open.

We’re gonna come back to that in a couple of weeks. Just to recap, the correct behaviors are where you started. You started in the beginning. That’s where you were supposed to start as a beginner, brand new business. You’re supposed to do things the way you did. There’s nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is the fact that you are still running your business like a beginner.

You have experience, and yet you’re still treating it like a beginner I want to know, I want you to think on this, of those five examples I gave you, which one hit you the hardest? I don’t want you to commit to all five of them right away. One of those hit you the hardest. I know it. I know you heard one of those and you’re like, “Ugh, that’s the thing.”

What can you do about that? How can we change this? How can we correct this? How can we go from I’m a baby beginner business to, no, I’m running a successful business. I don’t do this anymore. I r- want to remind you, you’re not failing. You are not failing. You’re just… You’re trying to run a mature business on an outdated system, on a beginner’s system, and you’re beyond that.

It’s time to move. It’s time to do something better. My friends, Root to Rise is where we upgrade this system. This is where many, if not most, of the women that go through this program do a lot of this work, and these women have been in business for years and years and years and years and years. These changes are so impactful to how their business feels, how their business runs, how their clients feel, not to mention their profit margins, their burnout levels, their amount of free time, and everything else.

This is where we do this work. The wait list is open now. You can get on that at sabrinagebhart.com/mastermind-waitlist. And the 2027 enrollment will be opening later this fall. So I would really suggest that you get on the list. If this episode spoke to you, will you send me a DM on Instagram at xo.sabrinagebhart?

I love to hear from listeners. I love to hear when something resonated with them, and I would love to chat with you about it. That’s all we’ve got for today, my friends. We’ll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the Shoot It Straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at sabrinagebhart.com/podcast.

Come find me and connect over on the Gram at xo.sabrinagebhart. And if you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you’d hit that subscribe button and leave me a review. Until next time, my friends.